The Kenya Sports Academy under the Ministry of Sports and Culture today concluded a four-day training camp for grassroots and upcoming basketball coaches in the Nairobi County region.
Led by basketball legend Ronnie Owino over 50 coaches were taught to identify and nurture basketball players from a young age until they transition to the professional game.
“Our topic here was teaching tactics and teaching technical aspects when it comes to talent identification. We have also talked about talent identification the parameters to choose good players where we have to think about potential because someone can think they are not so good now then letter they get better so considering the tangibles and the intangibles,” Owino said.
Former Equity Hawks point guard Samba Mjomba and coach Patrick Koirana were part of the clinic and said they had benefited a lot from the training and would go on to apply the knowledge.
“I have learnt about three team coaching that involves the heart the body and the mind its basically moving away from our traditional coaching methods so we are moving to a more mental and psychological ways of handling the game.
“I have learnt how to handle different age groups of players. These are basic things that we need as coaches. It is not an easy task handling different age groups but the knowledge the tutors have impacted on us will be very useful,” the former Equity hawks point guard stated.
Kenya Academy of Sports principal sports and curriculum and training officer Godfrey Mwaloma has promised to spread the training programs to the rest of the country in order to benefit the enter nation.
“We are happy with what the trainers have done with the coaches because these are the ones who will go to the grass roots to identify and nature talent so that we have a big pool of players who we are going to use in future in the national team.
“We are planning to take this program to the grass roots especially during midterm breaks and when schools close so that we can balance education and sports,” Mwalome said.